


Even Nonsense can be Normal

by the_pobbles_aunt



Category: Edward Lear- Nonsense Poems
Genre: Oops, i managed to turn edward lear sad, my mad english coursework, points to whoever spots all the poems, this was supposed to be comedic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-28
Updated: 2013-02-28
Packaged: 2017-12-03 22:13:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/703199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_pobbles_aunt/pseuds/the_pobbles_aunt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So, I wrote this for my A level English, a year or so ago. I'm not sure whether I liked it any better then, but Edward Lear needs more appreciation, so here goes. By the way, unless you've read most of his poems you'll think I'm insane.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Even Nonsense can be Normal

I remember that hat. The street around me shivers with the cruel cold of the twilight as I prepare to settle down for the night, cold as the backs of crabs crawling on the seashore, all alone. Another drink? Why not, I feel alone enough to drink for two. The people hurrying by avert their eyes, to them I’m just another drunk bedding down in a doorway. (Though, of course, I won’t; I’ve more standards than that. Some people just don’t look beyond appearances. When I had that hat, people cared more. (“Here, get yourself a cup of tea, miss”. I didn’t correct them, people give you more money if they think you’re a girl.)  
I’d got the hat in a charity shop, couldn’t really afford anything else. My head could barely lift it up, piled high with ribbons, lace, buttons, and oddments. Bibbons, I called them, pleased with the word. People looked, though they didn’t see me. It got me noticed, and that was what mattered; it’s too easy to be unseen to those you beg from. The people it attracted came and went, at my perch, they didn’t stay. And they never, ever came back to me. Like little birds, endlessly flying away.

 

The first were the worst. Mr and Mrs Canary, they called themselves. Polite as only those who’re posh can be. Wonder how they ended up on the street. They were nice, though. “Did you ever see a spot so charmingly airy?” Could have been estate agents, those two. Still, they were company. They were right, too. I might have begged all day, but I didn’t sleep in a doorway then. There was a fire escape, outside, and you could use it to climb up. A bit of tarpaulin, and I was cosy as a nest of mice in winter, specially seeing as I was above the ovens. Nice baker’s shop too, the stuff they threw out, crumpets and such, made a good breakfast. I like to think they stayed for me too, of course, and we threw such parties. I remember one night, there was a beautiful full moon smiling down, swollen fat as a mulberry and glowing red as an ember. We danced, almost wildly, to the flute that Monkey Man (a nickname, he looked like a baboon) played. Magical music that was, nobody even complained, though I s’pose there was no-one to wake up. 

 

People weren’t all that bad, and you couldn’t expect them to stay forever. Some of them, though, my goodness me, they could be gross, hardened after the streets. I remember the old tramp who came to stay, all greasy, covered in dirt. He told stories of having swum across the channel, though looking at him I doubted it…  
“How’d you come on the street then?”  
(This from another guest, he always poked his nose into everything and everyone)  
“My Aunt Jobiska died, and there were debts; she’d always kept up appearances, pretending that she and the Park were doing fine, but all those feasts took their toll and when she died the money had run out.”   
I exchange a glance with the others there: he really was a toff, despite his appearance.  
“She had always looked after me, told me what to do. I had no way to support myself after her death; I had not even the sense to keep my toes”-  
“Sorry, you what?”   
“I lost my toes swimming in the Channel.”   
“…To what?”  
“You know. Things that live in the sea.”  
Well, at this point I were too busy keeping a straight face to ask which channel, even if he was telling the truth, his mysterious sea creatures having got the better of my sense of humour. Most likely frostbite, I thought. He saw I didn’t believe him, though, got all uptight and indignant. After we’d calmed him down a bit, stroked his ego, he said:  
“Anyway, I’m better off without them, that’s what my Aunt said anyway.”  
Bet he didn’t say that when they first came off, I thought, then didn’t think anymore ‘cos he took off his boots to show them and I was sick at the stench. Toffs never can take care of themselves.

 

Take the Lady Jones (as she called herself, and others did too, snidely, ‘cos some said after the fiasco with Bo she weren’t no lady, if you take my meaning.) She were married to a merchant, rich as you please, and then she had to go and get poor old Bo pining after her, homeless with nothing to offer. He of course, came moaning straight to me…  
“But Quan”- (pronounced “kan”, a shortening of the hideous name my parents gifted me with)- “Quan, I said she could share everything with me, I’d give her anything”-  
“Let’s be honest here, Bo,” I interrupted harshly (I had been listening for over an hour, after all, so don’t start). “Anything in your case is two chairs”-he’d been lucky, found them in a skip- “a candle and an old broken jug. Just let her alone.”  
“And my love,” he retorted. “Who else will offer her a love as deep as mine, deep as the rolling deeps of the sea?”  
I made sicky noises and sighed at him, my disgust obvious. “Really?” I demanded. I’m eating, thank you very much, so don’t make me nauseous.”  
Well, he asked her out, she refused, as expected. Big surprise. Poor old Bo fled, mind as well as body really, over the seas to his own sunset islands. Sunset in every sense of the word; heard he’d been picked up, diagnosed with early-onset dementia. Might as well call him loony.   
Anyway, the “Lady” Jones, that got him into that state, only went and decided she was in love with him, not that it did any good, for she never saw him again and I found her crying into his old broken jug. Stupid woman.  
Not that I’m jaded about love, you understand, I’ve seen it, but it’s never happened to me, so I tend to be a bit sceptical. Mind you, so were everyone else, when they saw Kit and Owlie. They were just so different, you’d never have thought they would work. But it did, and they stowed away on a ship, got married and danced by the light of their own moon, so that showed me. And once you looked past the obvious differences, they had a lot in common, both night creatures after all. Anyone can be happy.

 

Long ago I was one of the singers of life, now I’m one of the dumbs. That’s how I feel now, remembering all this. Just a stupid old man, alone, no-one’s been up to my perch, my very own concrete tree branch, in years, and even I am finding it harder to get up there. So much for all my friends, I cry, unwanted, my craziness normal here. People, children, may point and whisper but they never worry as I fade away daily. How pleasant to know you, the Canaries once said, not that it counts for much now. Ah well. I move slowly, climbing up the staircase, and that’s when I hear the flute. I can hear voices, dancing as the moonlight grows. I pull myself over the edge of the rooftop, and can only smile, stunned, at what lies in front of me. That hat.


End file.
